From the Crikey grapevine, the latest tips and rumours …

ASIC trouble? Not naming names, but Tips was told a team at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, investigating the Andrew Sigalla case, has been retrenched just as the matter is due to appear in court on July 29. Sigalla was arrested in May last year and is charged with breaching his director’s duties at tech company TZ by using $6 million in company funds, mostly to pay gambling debts.

An ASIC spokesman told Crikey the organisation would not comment on matters relating to individual members of staff, but added Crikey’s “source is incorrect”:

“ASIC regards the prosecution of Mr Sigalla as an important matter and adequate resources are being provided to assist the [Commonwealth DPP] in this case.”

WA Labor power plays. Outgoing WA Labor Senator Louise Pratt railed against the factional heavyweights controlling preselections and elections as she left Parliament, but it sounds as though little has changed … the Western Australian branch of the ALP elected MLA Peter Tinley as president on Tuesday night over Adrian Evans from the Maritime Union of Australia. According to a tipster, Tinley is from the Right of the party but won 641 votes to 579 in a Left-leaning branch, which points to something else at play:

“Rumour has it that the surprise win by the Right in a strong Left-wing branch may have been part of wider factional deal involving support for state secretary Simon Mead at this weekend’s state conference. The rumoured deal is also expected to see union heavyweight and newly elected Senator Joe Bullock continue his 20-year reign on the powerful state Administrative Committee.”

WA State Secretary Simon Mead told Crikey: “It’s absolutely ridiculous. Both Adrian and Peter ran hard for the presidency with great campaigns. They were chosen by 2,500 branch members.”  Of course there’s always two sides to each story and our WA spies can contact us here.

Stay off the Tinder! Earlier this week we had occasion to reprimand the Oz’s media editor Sharri Markson for mocking up a lame faux dating profile for rival Joe Aston (from the AFR). We asked whether Markson had stumbled across Aston’s actual Tinder profile because she was on there herself, but sources tell us she has a boyfriend. Still, someone at the Oz was trawling Tinder — wonder who?

Meanwhile, we’ve heard some Queensland political types may also be devoting too much time to Tinder:

“In Queensland there are a number of staff in one senior minister’s office who spend a lot of time on social media. And they’re not spruiking the government’s good news, instead they troll members of the public and sarcastically bait journalists they dislike, for all the world to see. Even more bizarre are their antics on Tinder and Grindr. The Brisbane media and political world is small, but these guys and gals seem completely unperturbed by the fact screenshots of their ‘trolling and molling’ are regularly being sent to press gallery journalists and their own party masters.”

If you don’t know what Tinder and Grindr are, ask anyone under 30.

Many unhappy returns. It seems that the government’s answer to simplifying tax returns has done anything but, with users reporting problems with both myTax (a web portal designed to replace eTax for users with simple tax returns) and the myGov website. For the first time this year users need to open a myGov account — an online account that links information for government agencies including Medicare and Centrelink — to lodge their tax returns with eTax. MyGov has already been criticised for security issues, and now just two days into the financial year, online forums are full of gripes with the new site. We’ve received a few complaints:

“Merits of that idea aside, the execution seems to be woeful, with registration and linking accounts together on the myGov website timing out again and again, sometimes dumping users back to the initial page after they’ve filled out several screens of info. There’s a message up saying ‘myGov is experiencing intermittent issues and we are working hard to resolve these. We apologise for any inconvenience.’ Surely they should have anticipated high demand at tax time?”

“It doesn’t work — times out, rejects information as incorrect when it is correct and naturally you can’t talk to anyone, well after waiting an hour or so on two occasions I have to say you can’t talk to anyone. For the family who uses online tax lodgement it gets worse because every person who lodges (or doesn’t lodge but has information retrieval requirements) has to join MyGov first — and separately, and then separately get their details from all the various government departments. This is all a nightmare folks — and for older folk a disaster. What bloody idiot dreamed this up? It’s great to have broadband but worse than useless if the software doesn’t work or is inadequate. Of course that’s par for the course in an understaffed, harried and under resourced bureaucracy.”

We asked the ATO about the problems, and were told there was a limited impact on the 12,454 people who submitted their tax return on July 1. We wondered who is that organised to be filing already, but it seems some people out there are very keen for their tax refunds. An ATO spokesperson told us that only seven formal complaints were received in the past two days:

“The intermittent issues with myGov on 1 July 2014 had a limited impact on taxpayers using the myTax simplified lodgement service. The Department of Human Services has advised us that they have resolved the issues with myGov and services have improved.”

If the only certain things in life are death and taxes, perhaps we should add government software problems to the list?

Gun pun. Thanks, Sarah Palin, for facebooking a pic of your son Track in his amusing T-shirt (sample comment on the post: “Pray for everyone and the God too”).

Here in the Crikey bunker we’re certainly praying for Americans — and anyone called “Track” — looks like they all need it.

TT fights back. With journo jobs thin on the ground, it’s interesting to see Today Tonight advertising two positions this week (senior journalist and producer/researcher) to work out of Adelaide. Seven dumped TT from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane earlier this year, leaving the show to linger on in Perth and Adelaide. Rumour is some senior Seven execs wanted to axe the show entirely, but chairman Kerry Stokes wanted it to survive. And BRW rates Stokes as Australia’s 14th richest person on a cool $2.22 billion, so you know, he has clout.

We’ve heard with TT not running out of the eastern seaboard any more, the western states were struggling to find enough content, which is why these hires are being made. Anyway, with thousands of former journalists leaving the field to eke out a living writing press releases somewhere, it’s good to see a few new media jobs opening up.

Ms Tips’ sporting update. Great news that the most exciting thing to ever come out of Canberra, Nick Kyrgios, beat Milos Raonic overnight and has advanced to the next round of Wimbledon! Well, didn’t he? Today’s papers are full of the Aussie sporting hero’s great success. Kyrgios “has vowed to smash his way to the top” proclaimed the Hun, and other papers were equally excited.

Except, er, Kyrgios lost to Raonic. The game finished just before 5am our time, well after the newspapers went to bed, so they couldn’t bring us the bad news. It does give you a reason to read the internet, not newspapers, when northern hemisphere sporting events fire up …

*Heard anything that might interest Crikey? Send your tips to boss@crikey.com.au or use our guaranteed anonymous form